Broadband is becoming increasingly central to the lives of UK consumers and is at the heart of business success. Over the past few years current generation broadband has changed the way we book holidays, pay bills, search for jobs, keep in touch with friends and family, listen to music and watch video.
However with an increasing number of consumers using broadband connections more extensively, the limits of current generation copper-based broadband are becoming increasingly evident.
As customers wish to watch higher quality video material, or share content they have created with others, the constraints of the pipe connecting their homes and businesses will start to limit their choices.
Superfast broadband will enable consumers and businesses to access high definition video services or other bandwidth-hungry content and audiovisual services over the internet with ease. The result will be transformational for businesses, boosting the speed at which they transact, interact and access information, facilitating a new level of multimedia communications and services.
Above all, superfast broadband will boost our knowledge economy. Based on sharing information, expertise and innovation, this will translate directly into economic growth as businesses collaborate and develop.
Competitive Edge
For many businesses, superfast broadband will deliver competitive edge for the first time. Where it was once all about bringing the internet into the home, it’s now about developing the lines between businesses and consumers.
Sophie Beasley, head of business programme for the Prince’s Trust, specialises in helping young, disadvantaged individuals start and run their own businesses on behalf of the Prince’s Trust, which assists 40,000 young people a year. There are 2,500 start-up businesses each year, with 58 per cent still trading into their third year. She believes that superfast broadband will change the way the next generation of companies do business.
“Our young people are hungry for everything that technology can offer them, because it really does make all the difference to their businesses and puts them into a completely different playing field,” she explains.
“If you are that one man band at home, what superfast broadband is going to mean to you is that, all of a sudden, you can compete with businesses that have many more employees than you, and you can turn corners much faster,” she adds. “If you have an idea in the morning you can contact somebody in the US in the afternoon and it will be a reality tomorrow.”
Superfast broadband may also underpin an online economy where consumers and online businesses can trade and develop new applications and services as well as create opportunities to drive the UK’s innovative and creative industries in real time, maximising productivity.
“Superfast broadband will help British businesses to be more productive by enabling them to access resources much faster,” Beasley adds. “It means people can do business on the web in real time, and not have to wait for web pages and high-quality video to load.”
It could also help to reduce the costs of developing and growing businesses. Where once you would have to find suitable premises and invest in high price technology, employees can begin to collaborate from home and communicate just as if they were in the office.
“Those meetings that you have face to face, because you want that human element: you’ll now be able to have that in your office, without having to travel.”
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